An Emotion Infects a Nation.

Rating: 9/10 (9 May 2005)

A film that at time plays like a frenzied docudrama, 28 DAYS LATER... is unrelenting, grim, horrific, and completely nightmarish. Images of violence against humans dominates the screen for a few minutes, and we soon learn these are televisions mounted against a wall, broadcasting non-stop footage of the inhuman things people do to one another. A monkey lies strapped down, facing these images, helpless. There are others in cages nearby. A band of environmentalists break in, predictably to free these imprisoned monkeys, but a conflict ensues as a scientist barges in and warns them it would be completely insane to do so -- they're infected with Rage. However, since scientists normally equal evil corporations and dehumanized technology known for cruelty not only against animals but humans, they proceed to free one of the apes... and total pandemonium breaks loose as the monkey viciously attacks its freer, and in seconds we see her eyes have become red. She is an infected.
And this is the simple setup for a movie that in 100 minutes frightens the pants of even a jaded person. To see shots of a deserted London magnified by shots of abandoned vehicles, overturned equipment, and a haunting collage of missing persons that recalls the scores of photos of the missing that did not survive the 9 - 11 attacks, is extremely disturbing and unsettling and made me squirm in my seat as Cillian Murphy's character Jim walks around town, having awaken about a month later from a coma. It's not reassuring for him to know he may be the only surviving person in the city, and soon he learns there are others out there... but not reasonable, frightened people as much as ferocious predators who will rip the flesh right off you, and if mercy takes over, you may die right there and then, because it only takes 20 seconds for full infection to take over and turn you into a raving monster.
That he is saved at the last minute by others who have survived the madness is his saving grace. These are Naomi Harris as Selena and Noah Huntley as Mark, who brief Jim on what happened in haunting monologues, and that Danny Boyle stays focused on Huntley's face as he relates to Jim his own story is flashback enough: it only heightens the terror that swept London and that is still alive and well. This prompts Jim to go visit his parents, maybe hoping they are still alive, and after a near-fatal encounter with an infected there in which Mark does not survive (Selena, absolutely committed to survive this, hacks him to pieces after quickly noticing he's been infected), they barely manage to escape more infected before meeting two other people, a bearish man and his daughter (Brendan Gleeson and Megan Burns). They have been listening to scattered transmissions that are indicating Manchester holds a possible refuge for survivors.
Once they make the decision to leave to Manchester the movie takes a turn and becomes a road film and involved a harrowing if somewhat implausible escape from London through a tunnel, where even the rats are running away from the sheer horror these barely seen people have become. That they eventually meet this fort in an already destroyed Manchester gives them little reassurance, which proves to be true as a small band of military guys lead by Christopher Eccleston have dubious intentions with the women.
And here is where Danny Boyle cleverly turns an apocalyptic movie into a study of the human race: can the people who are supposedly meant to protect us be actually worse than the ones who have fallen to a devastating plague? The answer, quite simply, turns out to be yes. That this makes Jim do a much needed transition from dazed youth to fierce survivor drives the point even more home: Rage wiped out most of the population, as a virus, but in given circumstances, is found quite well within us, and Jim becomes so filled with it at one climactic sequence it takes Selena a second before reacting that he hasn't yet been infected.
This is a very tense film. There are moments of quietude in a field, where sleep comes uneasy, and even that moment to me was worse than any of the moments when the infected actually sped out and after any of the characters. Seen in stroboscopic images, they becomes even more frightening than if seen as lumbering idiots. If the ending seems a little too upbeat, maybe it's only the decision Boyle and the screenwriters took after having us gone through so much gut-wrenching tension and clear calls, that it was only fair to have Jim, Selena, and Hannah survive and see a glimmer of hope at the end. Other than that, 28 DAYS LATER compresses the battles with good and evil in a world gone wild instead of going all over the place with too many characters like THE STAND and many others do. Intelligent, repulsive at times, unbearable, this was one of the best films of 2003. The DVD release has some nice extras, like alternate endings, deleted scenes, for those into investigating further into Boyle's dark tale.